Time/Date Error (Damned of the 2/19th-Book Six) - Done

Detritus of a Violent Past

2/19th Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
29 October, 1987
06 30

It was still dark and cold as Hell's Icebox on the surface of the snow. I didn't have snowshoes so I had to walk slowly. The glacier had calved recently and I was moving across the shattered ice sheet slowly. It had been almost forty feet thick and I'd had to climb up the ice, using my knife instead of the ice axe I so desperately needed.

Group was behind me as I moved across the air field, past the empty hangars and quonset huts that normally would have the helicopters and gear on loan from 11th ACR. There was a War Fight system under the operations control building, but I knew it would be useless for me. It had ammunition for the helicopters and crew, as well as survival areas for the crews up at the airfield to ride out a near nuclear hit.

What I needed was at the far end, where a C-150 had crashed two years ago. The engines had failed upon takeoff, for who knows what reason, and it had just slammed into the ground, the wings breaking off, the engines snapping off the wings, the fuselage cracking down the length and the  tail section breaking off. It was a few hundred meters past the end of the air strip, and the Air Force had yanked the avionics, some salvage, and the engines and left the rest.

Why bother hauling garbage out of Hell, right?

I expected it to be buried under snow, but as I got to the edge of the ice sheet I could see the plane clearly. It was completely exposed, the paint cracked and peeled.

I almost lost it climbing down the ice sheet when a section wobbled, but I managed to hold my grip on the knife.

I needed proper gear.

As soon as I got off the ice sheet the wind hit me, damn near killed me. It was whipping in from the north, skating around the peak, and slicing across the edge of the airfield. That wind sheer was dangerous as hell for flying, we'd lost two Blackhawks and a Chinook to it, and it damn near picked me up off the ground and threw me against the forty foot sheer ice cliff.

I hunched over, fighting the wind as it sliced straight through my clothing. My balls throbbed and erupted in fiery pain, my face went ice cold, and my mouth went numb. Still, I kept moving forward through the dark and cold. A two hundred foot walk took me nearly ten feet of staggering side to side, getting pushed back two steps for every three feet I went forward. My face was nothing but burning pain under the numbness. My skull felt like jagged glass under the skin, but I kept moving.

My makeshift knee brace kept me from going face first into the ice, frozen grass, or tarmac the times my knee gave out. At least the cold had numbed the pain in the joint and in my thigh, although the pain had spread steadily up into my hip.

Getting inside the shattered fuselage was like stepping into a sauna as the wind-chill cut out. I stood there for a moment, letting my body heat flush through my body, let my heart push warm blood from my core into the outer section of my torso and into my limbs.

I knew I had to get moving again or I'd stand there until I froze to death. I staggered through the wreckage, heading for the cockpit. The wind ripping across the broken part of the fuselage about knocked me down, only the fact my knee was locked in the brace kept me from falling over. Pain flared in my hip but the lizard slapped one of the buttons and I was able to ignore the pain and keep moving. The cockpit was closed and I reached under a damaged plate and pulled out a small crowbar. I slammed the wedge into the gap and popped the cockpit door open. The seats were gone, the avionics were gone, but I knew what kind of condition the cockpit was in.

When I closed the door the wind cut off and I sagged against the wall, rubbing my arms through my insulated field jacket. I wanted to just lean against the metal wall, but I knew the cold of the wall was leeching my body heat away.